Have You Hitched Your Wagon to the Wrong Horse?

How to identify narcissistic behaviors before it's too late.

If you hitch your wagon to a person that does not share your core values and no, Voluntaryism isn't a value, you may be taken for a ride that by the end goes far from your vision. I subscribe to the label “Voluntaryism”, but it usually is indicative of certain set of values in practice in the realm of larger social structures-but it is not necessarily indicative of how these values play out in personal relationships. Why you might individually identify with that label is more indicative of your core values than merely identifying with the label in itself. The reasons vary.

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Part of why I share so much about values and narcissism is because when it comes down to it, if you don't heal from narcissistic parental abuse or behavior, or identify the wounds caused by such behaviors/symptoms of narcissism, you can end up procreating with people wherein it can not only have destructive effects to you and your world, but also affect your children. Your future children will never get a choice to not have the myriad issues of growing up with a narcissist as a role model parent.

That is entirely up to you.

If you have a vision of a life for yourself, married with children, I encourage you while looking for this partner to envision your children growing up with this warm, caring, loving partner of yours as a parent. Children will test your patience more than you will ever trigger one another. Look for signs while dating that a person seems well equipped to handle any and all emotional triggers with resilience and grace.

Having an unhealthy parent can tragically alter how your child grows up. This literal tragedy may have unpredictable results which you can not control. No matter how much you do to compensate, to talk with your child and influence him or her to raise the child’s awareness, your child can grow up to be a narcissist and learn those traits from your partner. The sad fact is that narcissistic traits and tactics are a very easy and consistent way to get what one wants. Obviously, it's complicated. But children with other issues at play mentally or emotionally won't necessarily have the cognitive abilities of grasping the downside of getting what they want easily and consistently while hurting and exploiting the emotions of others. Certain common disorders children face today can make empathy harder to grasp much less embrace.

Watch out for people that move too quickly without true justification other than your physical appearance or social status or wealth. Your soul isn't so shiny that it is readily apparent on a first date usually. Even if it is, give it a year (or longer) with your eyes wide open for the signs and responses to triggers for that shine to wear off before marriage.

Sociopathic mimicry is also a tactic used by narcissists. The individual suffering the condition doesn’t have to do anything but mirror exactly what you say back to you in nuanced ways or with variations that make you believe you have more in common than you do. I don’t think they do this consciously. Most sociopaths and narcissists hide who they truly are even from themselves. One of the ways they cope with their lack or disdain for their true values and identity, is to mirror and quickly adopt the values and personality traits of others.

Some people, just want to be liked and utilize mimicry as a feature of dating. They aren’t necessarily narcissists or sociopaths. They may just have low self-esteem.

In either case, it’s a very poor practice for creating harmonious and enduring relationships, so if it’s one you have adopted, unwittingly, search for ways to be yourself when getting to know other people. This will not only keep you from being the mirror for someone else’s desires, it will help you spot people who are using this tactic to ingratiate themselves to you.

When getting to know anyone, ask questions about daily routines, hobbies and the like, searching for details that stand out to you as being different from yours, where your heart tugs at you suggesting it might be a deal breaker. Overcome that heart soreness enough to be honest with the other person (as much as yourself) about your differences. True harmony in relationships is only found when people can reconcile their differences in healthy ways. A reconciliation will generally come across as respect. If it comes across as the other person going overboard to compensate for saying anything that didn’t perfectly mirror your values, notice that.

Also, it’s good to see who your partner is with other people, the friends they had before they met (or became) you. If you notice massive incongruence in their behavior and values and personality with people they established an altered persona with, pay attention to that.

Don’t talk yourself out of noticing major red flags. We don’t end up with narcissists because we are top to bottom victims. We end up with them in part because we chose not to listen to our guts showing us the signs. Almost everyone recovering from narcissistic behaviors effectively learns how to listen to and trust their instincts and their own bodies while looking for signs, stuff they saw early on but underestimated which they will never ignore again.

Look for signs people you spend time with share your values. Learn what your core values are by paying attention to the values of people you admire most. Notice how people with your values behave and take into account when the behavior of the person is in alignment with what they say their truth is.

A person who is saying they value health and health freedom, who talks a big game of supporting certain healthier lifestyle choices and gardening shouldn’t be morbidly obese, suffering acute symptoms of lifestyle-choice-influenced illnesses and unable to move, unless they just came to the realization of these values yesterday.

A congruent person who talks of a premium value for agorist ventures and lifestyle in the ideal, probably wouldn’t be living in a penthouse apartment. Shouldn’t be undermining the effort of influencing nearly everyone working toward sustainability right now during a pending food crisis through personal application of agorist practices. It might be a justification for their own choices to do other things with their time and money. If they are talking a big game about Libertopia being about specialization (I can make the music for our agorist based society while you do the hard labor of farming), they definitely shouldn’t be eating take out, franchise, corporate/government subsidized food almost nightly (cough cough) with their money that didn’t go to primarily supporting a local agoristic minded farmer. When questioned about these seeming incongruities wouldn’t outright decline to share how much effort they’ve put into applying their alleged agoristic values in their day to day life “for privacy reasons” whilst sharing everything else they do and dropping names of whatever “important people” in the movement they know very ostentatiously. Last, they wouldn’t be attacking others who support agorism and who actively live the agoristic lifestyle for “not being pure enough” philosophically. These are signs of incongruence.

No one needs Bernie Sanders talking about the value of communes in their commune distracting the commune of doing the work of being a commune. And if all he adds is music, it better be the best fucking music I ever heard if I am supposed to exchange part of my cow which I fucking slaved over with that mother fucker. Yes, I need music. But I also make my own. Most of us are pretty skilled and professionally, classically trained musicians in our own right. We can sit around the campfire, roasting homemade, cow gelatin and raw honey sweetened nutritious marshmallows jamming for free every night after farming when this dumpster fire of a government capsizes.

I digress. You can profile incongruence. It’s usually pretty obvious.

People don't always come walking up to you wrapped in a bow with a title on their name tag that makes their values readily apparent. There's no brand or color scheme of branding that suggests one person shares your core values. I wish it was that simple.

This is why I suggest looking beyond social ideologies to what the driving force is in a person's most common behaviors. Even though some people are doing the right things, it doesn't take long to notice their reasons are not aligned with your values or your vision for your life.

I also suggest looking beyond what a person's bank account seems to say about them financially in how you ascertain their values. Some people who do the right things for the wrong reasons are good at monetization and some are poor at it. Likewise, those who do the right things for the right reasons ability to monetize those things also fluctuates.

Whether someone happens to be making an income at something is not the indicator of their values. If your old money story involves parents who gave you the impression that people who struggle financially are better or more virtuous than those who have financial success, you need to heal that in yourself and reconcile it in your values prior to looking for others whose values you share.

Likewise, fame is an indicator of nothing- when speaking of values. People could like what you are doing, how you are doing it or why you are doing it if you happen to become famous. Some people are great at getting the attention of others. That doesn't mean they have bad reasons or poor values. Distancing yourself from people who happen to be famous because they are famous is as nonsensical as distancing yourself from people who happen to be wealthy because they are wealthy.

Jesus got pretty fucking famous. Everyone written about at length in the Bible got pretty fucking famous. Some were impeccable, some were not in the ballpark of perfection. Likewise, Jesus never lacked for wealth despite being born in a manger. Apparently moms and pops put those baby gifts from the wise men to good use and had a nice little carpentry outfit going on to give little Jees a good start and a healthy Hebrew scholarship fund.

I want to get back to the main point here. If you ask your divorced friends about their relationships, you will find countless stories of how people either rushed into or settled for partners with mismatched values and how that has affected not only their lives while living with a partner with sometimes very toxic traits, but their lives forever watching their kids struggle and suffer to reconcile a life with that partner as a parent.

Again, I caution you to be very wary of whom you hitch your wagon. The journey you take could be ephemeral, but it could be your entire life and that of your children and grandchildren.

Think of the children.